Founded in Vancouver in 2019, Ginkgo Health was launched to reduce the global healthcare burden caused by aging through technological solutions.
Ginkgo is planning to release next month Ginkgo Active, an artificially intelligent application to deliver personalized exercise prescriptions for the prevention and management of chronic conditions and injuries.
An exercise prescription should consider myriad health rules such as exercise type, intensity, fitness level, and risk, posits the firm—a computation it suggests is beyond human capacity. Each AI prescription will be generated by screening more than 170,000 health data points, according to the B.C. startup.
“A personalized approach is key to maximizing outcomes,” says Amanda Leonard, Program Director for the Neurologic Physical Therapy Residency Program at the University of Maryland Medical System.
Over the past year, Ginkgo has been conducting user testing and refining the application. The underlying algorithm has been “rigorously validated through simulations,” according to the company, with several business groups enrolling in group benefit plans, offering Ginkgo Active to employees.
Ginko was founded by Maggie Deng, who drew inspiration for the company from her time as a board member of stroke rehabilitation tech firm NextStep Robotics.
“We could not find any technology that can guide billions of people to do billions of different training programs at the same time,” says Deng, “so we totally understand why some products use solutions like pre-recorded videos and wearable devices to help users to get active.”
Ginkgo takes its name from the Ginkgo biloba, a species of tree known to live for over 3,000 years in regions around the world.
In addition to out-computing humans on data points, Ginkgo also has the ability to make micro-adjustments to training sessions from real time feedback, automatically modifying training sessions on a daily basis to accommodate different needs. Every four weeks, each user receives a re-assessment of their health and gets an updated exercise prescription.
The app also features a fully gamified storyline to mirror a real-life experience and to better incentivize habit-building.
“We were inspired by gaming technology,” Deng said. “We were advised many times to build something simple to start with, but we couldn’t settle for something with a simple function and pretend that it can solve a complex problem.”
Approximating the cost of gym membership rather than that of hiring a full-time personal trainer, Gingko Active will be priced at US$50 per user per month.
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